Hi all,
I have a very important personal project that could use all the input you can muster. My dear friend and boss died suddenly in June. Our school is having a memorial for her in a month. I would like to retouch this picture as my contribution to her memory. I working on trying to achieve a portrait effect. I am asiking for pointers, techniques, ideas to help me along. Any better ideas are also appreciated. Your help will help me to complete this. If I don't make the deadline, I intend to have a prototype. I am giving this as much time as necessary. Please feel free to try your hand, I am a visual learner, but not a forger!!:)
So anyone who can assist me is welcome and will have my eternal gratitude. (Of course that won't get you very far, but at least you'll know I'm thankful!!)
In addition, anyone who has a good printer to recommend for the finished product please pass the info on.
I am thanking all of you in advance.
Debbie

Debbie,

Sorry to hear of your loss. I'll leave the tough part up to the pros. There are two photo finishers listed in the links here (http://www.retouchpro.com/links/index.php?sid=603241973&t=sub_pages&cat=20) . The first one, Burrell Photo, is one that I used for quite a few years (but no longer have a need for their services). I always received top quality photo finishing from them, and they do make traditional prints from digital. But be warned, they are by no means cheap. You will also need to set up an account if you want to use their services.

Ed

Hi Debbie,

I couldn’t eliminated the blur in this photo, but below is how I color corrected it.

First I applied auto levels.
I smoother out her skin using Jak’s tutorial on Retouching Acne (http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/acne/index.html)

I removed the red color cast by:

1. Added a blank layer above photo.
2. Sampled a color from Sister Mary’s cheek, filled the blank layer with the sampled color, changed layer to color mode, and pressed Ctrl+I to invert color. I lowered the opacity of the color layer to 33%.
3. Added a Selective color layer - Reds: 0, -62, -1, 0: Yellows - +1, 0, -100, 0.

I extracted her from the background and placed her on a new background using colors I sampled from her dress.

I sampled colors from her hair and dress, then created a color layer and painted out the blue tint in her hair and dress.

Smudged the ends of her hair in places to make it look less cutout.

Used the burn tool on her right lens and slight below to help mitigate sm--all glare.

Merged all layers and applied auto color.

Duplicated merged layer and went over left side of her forehead and hairline with healing brush. Lowered opacity of this layer to 77% and flattened layers.

Hope this helps.

Sharon:)

The picture is far too blurry and lacks way too much detail to ever look decent as a photo. So I suggest you turn it into a painting instead. Lots of good ways to do this, and they would look nice printed too. A retouched "photo" version would no doubt print up badly, and not be a very nice tribute for this wonderful person. (Why is this awful photo the best one you've got to work with anyway? Maybe you should ask family members for better pics.)

Anyhow, this is the best I could come up with as a "photo retouching" version. I cropped it to 8 by 10 proportions, then sharpened the red channel, used levels adjustment, dust&scratches, blur tool on face, color mode painted over with shades of greenish blue in shadow areas to get the red out of face and neck shadows, lightly over-brushed on normal blend mode with peachy color to help blend the facial tones and hide speckliness. Also lightened and desaturated the teeth and hair near face to get the yellow out, cloned out flaws on face and the too-dark creases by eyes, darkened the irises to make eyes stand out more, and lots of other minor tweaks.

Phyllis

Sharon- Thanks I'm going to try some of those techniques. A number of which I never considered.

Phyllis=Yes my intention is to create a painting of sorts. I know the picture would not transfer well. I have no painting skills and if you or anyone else can point me in the right direction I would be very happy.
This photo is from the family. Of all the ones they gave me, this one is the best. Sister did not like to have her picture taken and in most she is grimacing. In 23 years, this is the nicest smile I ever saw on her. She was overly conscious of her teeth. So I am working with the best I could get right now. You should see the other!!
Thank you again for all your assistance now and later. You too Ed I will check them out. Price is not a consideration at this time. Thanks again
Debbie

Debbie -- your memorial contribution will be greatly treasured, I'm sure, whether you need to paint it or retouch it, and Sharon and Phyllis have given you good info. I understand the Sister's discomfort with being photographed, but wonder whether some of the other photos might be of use in your memorial. Is the other image that you've seen blurred? If the pose is similar to this one, but just missing that lovely big smile, remember -- you can sometimes "add a smile" :D

Debbie, now I understand your situation...sure have a challenge on your hands! I would suggest hiring Wanda to paint it for you in Painter. That's my first choice. Second choice would be to try some of Photoshop's filters to fake paint effects. AFTER you have sharpened the edges and smoothed out the speckles on skin, then apply one or combination of the following filters:

Watercolor: I tried it and had to fade the opacity a bit to make it less dark and blotchy, but the result was good.

Angled strokes and/or crosshatch for a sketchy look. I also tried blending a layer of colored pencil with lowered opacity and soft light which looked pretty good.

Paint daubs, faded a bit, for quick painting look.

Paint daubs + anisotropic diffuse + slight sharpen (this is the one I am uploading now)

Any of these can be blended over your retouched original or over each other in various opacities and blend modes to get an effect you like. Just experiment a bit and you might get something that you can use.

Phyllis

Phyllis,
Great thoughts. I have been experimenting with the various filters and figured if I play enough I might get what I want. Since I want this to be from me, I am going to give it my best shot. But if I can't do it you're right Wanda would be an excellent choice.
Thanks to you and Sharon and CJ I'm headed in the right direction. Hey maybe I'll find a hidden talent (read that-invisible).
Either way I'm going full steam ahead. I will post my attempts for critiques and let the majority help me make the final decisions. Maybe Greg and Wanda will also be able to send some ideas my way. And Jak's tutorials have been helpful as well.

CJ I wish I had a better one but so far this one is the clearest! Then family has promised to do one more search and a few of her fellow sisters are looking in the convent. Maybe I'll get lucky in time.

Thanks again to all for your kindness
Deb

Debbie,
I have attached below an oil rendering of Sister Mary.

Cloned out the other lady. Adjusted color. Tried Jak's tutorial to remove blemishes.

Duplicated, Image>Adjustments>Invert top copy. Changed blending option to color dodge. Grayscaled without flatenning. Gaussian blur about 4.

Using art history brush and History brush tool, different brushes to put back the colors. Used Rough pastels filter. Then duplicated copy. On top copy, used lighting effects to get some texture then set blending option to hard light. Adjusted opacity, flatten.

The file size was reduced to conform with upload limitation.

Hope this helps.

Tony

Here's my contribution. Some parts of it are still a little rough, but it's really late and I have to work in the morning.

1. Used a selective color adjustment layer to fix the color

2. Smoothed grain with Dust & Scratches and the history brush

3. Made a new color layer and colored the skin a better skin color

4. Burned in teeth to create separation (don't know what her tooth shape really looked like so I probably got this part a bit off)

5. Selected hair, made a new color layer and colored it gray. Blurred the layer to blend edges

6. Masked out background. Softened the mask edges with Gaussian Blur.

7. Colored eyes, cleaned up whites and added catchlights

8. Copied right shoulder to left side and blended

9. Flattened, made snapshot, did gaus. blur with noise added, made another snapshot and smoothed the skin with the history brush

10. Flattened and duplicated layer. Ran High Pass on dupe layer and set to soft light.

11. Added pink highlights to cheeks, lips, nose, ear, forehead and neck

12. Vignetted

Angue and Jak both did great portraits. Maybe this pic isn't going to be hopeless after all. Just shows what miracles you can work if you have talent and incentive! <loud applause>

Phyllis :)

Wow thanks so much. You've all given me so much to work with. I am really digging in now. I will be back in touch as I progress. I've read and saved all of your suggestions and samples. Trying everything!





















Debbie

With all the wonderful encouragement. I am making headway. Here is where I am so far with a way to go. But all your advice has been so helpful, I'm much more confident. Thanks again.
Debbie

Debbie, at this point you might want to try the following:

Make the red channel into its own layer then sharpen it and blend over the original in luminosity mode. Reduce opacity if it seems too light. This will make the glasses and mouth etc. sharper without blotching up the nice smooth skin you achieved. I tried it...worked pretty well.

Then you might want to smooth out that sharp edge between the hair and face by cloning over the edge with the stamp tool set to size 50 fuzzy brush and opacity of 80%. That did the trick when I tried it.

To get rid of the sharp outline on outside edges of her hair, bordering white background, you can just use a size 30 fuzzy eraser and go around it with an irregular motion, then use clone stamp here and there with fuzzy brush and opacity of 80% to make the edges look more natural.

You also might want to crop it closer by removing some of the left side and white space at top to make her look less wide and get rid of the excess background. If you crop it now to final print proportions you won't waste time working on areas that will be removed later. Nice job on taking out the other woman and fixing her dress, by the way!

I also would suggest removing some of the magenta in the picture since it is contaminating the shadows in her face. I tried adding a bit of green and cyan, just a touch, with color balance and it reduced the excess.

Oh, and don't forget to desaturate her teeth just a little bit to get some of the yellow out.

Bet you are having fun! Keep us posted on your progress.

Phyllis

here is my next steip. Phyllis, I've just read your tips and I will try more of that next. Not finished yet and have some ideas for the background wil keep you posted.
Debbie All Criticisims welcomed.
Debbie

Hi Debbie,

Sorry I haven't chimed in until now. I've had my own nightmare pics to work on! :( It looks like you're well on your way to making this a beautiful memorial contribution.

The biggest thing that stands out to me at this point in your progress is the sharp edges - particularly between the skin tones and hair line. (Phyllis mentioned this too.) Do you have the colors on separate layers? If so, you might want to just blur the layers slightly to reduce the sharp edges. That might also help soften the outer edges. If everything is on one layer, then I'd go with Phyllis' suggestions - esp. since she tried them out before suggesting them! :)

I can't wait to see the background you put in! :)

Jeanie

Here is my try...I'm on my way home, can't remeber exactly what I did, but I'll try to clarify on it later...I did this at work (slow afternoon) so I had to load it up before I left.


EDITED TO SAY...
I wasn't able to remember exactly what I did...

but IMO, the main things were...

-airbrushing the face and neck
-adding colors to the eyes and lips.
-touched up and added brightness to the teeth.
-I think I was in screen mode for a few layers (which made the image lighter)
-I also took her out of the background and blurred edges so she was a bit lighter than the background.
-The background was in the original picture...I saw it and liked it so much I cloned it and made it the whole background.
-then after merging layers and saving as jpg...I used those great features in PS7...auto color and auto levels.

-My goal was to make her brighter and stand out from the darkness of the picture.

And by no means do I think I am a wizard...just curious and love challenges, so thanks for letting me participate. What better place to learn than to follow the wizards ;)

Summertimerules,
I LOVE that background! How did you do it?
Jeanie

Debbie, the skin color is really nice now, and she seems sharper but not too much so. I like that soft "painted" look myself and think it is the answer to this blurry photo, so I am glad you went that direction.

I would suggest that you tone down the eye color, and also make her right iris larger. I took a few minutes to test out some ideas of what you might do to make the eyes look more realistic, and am attaching the sample. Here are the main details:

Cloned the left (larger) iris and put it on a new layer over the other eye, then erased away the edges where it touched the lids.

Selected irises, went to brighten/contrast and increased contrast till the eye became shiny and glasslike. Darkened edges of irises where they meet the white of eye, using burn tool (irises are always darker around the edge).

In hue/saturation chose "cyan" in the top menu then desaturated it 85%.

Took color from center of pupil and used it with soft brush about size 15 to make larger pupils (larger pupils make people look friendlier, and small pupils have the opposite effect, and this woman was obviously a kind person).

Added darker flesh tone to inside corners of eyes (the whites never go all the way to corners...always red in corners).

Used burn tool to make edges of upper lids darker to give a subtle effect of eyelashes. Also on lower lids but MUCH less opacity and added a reddish tone, since I am assuming this woman did not wear make-up.

Lightened teeth very slightly with dodge tool and desaturated very slightly with sponge tool. Used burn tool to add separations between teeth at boundary with gums and just a touch at the lower edge of teeth. Avoid drawing a line all the way between teeth in keeping with the soft focus of the rest of the picture.

I tried to be subtle and keep everything gently blurred to match the rest of the picture. Hope you will find some of this useful.

Keep in mind that if you used some filters to make this picture look more like a watercolor or oil painting, then these little flaws would become far less significant and many would require no fixing at all. That is the route I would go. A "painting" would be a cooler tribute anyhow, in my opinion, since photos are much more common. Photos are common...paintings are special!

Phyllis

Phyllis you have been a godsend. Thank you so much for all the time you have spent for me.
And of course all of you have been wonderful.. Tony, I neglected to thank you previously. Jeanie, your thumbs up are a great boost. Summertimerules, what a lovely contribution.
I am dilgently working to finish this and will be posting again as soon as I can. I intend to publicly acknowledge all of you for your contributions and support at the memorial.
Back to work
Debbie

Debbie:

When I originally saw the title of this thread and the forum in which it was posted my initial thought was, "She can't be talkin' about me. I got no business goin' there..." and then got distracted. (Had the title been something like "Retouch Wannabe's - come on down!" I'da been on this thread like a cheap suit!:) )

Though near the end of the journey, glad, now, that I had a chance to be a part of this endeavor. Looks like you've gotten (and are heeding) some spectacular advice so far. We're blessed to interact with so many talented and caring folks at RP, aren't we?

Here's another twist to consider. If it's appealing you can apply it to about any degree you like via opacity adjustment. As you'll see I applied it to the rendition that hadn't yet received the recommended work (isolating each tooth a bit), but it will give you an idea of what's possible.

Here's the general technique:
* After adding a background and creating a merged layer of foreground and background layers, I went to the channels palette and (in this case) duplicated the red channel (it had the most face and hair details)
* Drug red channel to "duplicate channel" icon at bottom of channels palete (new alpha channel created)
* Select All; Edit/Copy
* Clicked the RGB channel (Red channel copy turns 'off')
* Switched to layers palette
* Edit/paste, creating a new layer on top of merged foreground, background
* Duplicated this copy of the red channel and turned off the duplicate (I did this in case I hosed up the experimenting to follow.)
[the next 3 steps take some experimenting to find the combo that works for you]
* Watercolor (7,1,1) to the layer some texture
* Unsharp Mask (100,5,0) to bring out edges a bit
* Angled Stokes (50,8,4) add texture
* Facet to soften the edges a bit
* Set blend mode to Overlay [try Soft Light, too]. Opacity=100%; lower the opacity setting to tone-down the effect
* Copied merged foreground/BG layer and drug it to top of layer stack. Inverted this layer (CTRL+I) and set blend mode to Overlay. Sometimes this improves an image; sometimes not.
* Duplicated original layer of Sister Mary and drug to the top of the layer stack. Clicked "layer mask" icon and CTRL+I (to invert layer mask). Selected Airbrush tool, soft edged brush a little smaller than the eyes, set FG color to white and airbrushed back in some eye color and detail. (I see upon posting I put back a little too much eye detail, but you get the idea.)
* Merged visible layers into a new layer
* Duplicated final layer so I could experiment with Lighting Effects filter. Although the image I uploaded does not have Lighting Effects applied, that effect seems to have possibilities for this image.

Another possibility to consider: If you're running PS6 or PS7, investigate the application of the "Rust Flakes" texture via the Texturizer filter. Location depends on which version of PS you're using. It has to be applied via the "Load texture" option in the Texturizer filter dropdown menu.

Good luck on this one, Debbie... actually you don't need luck. You have your faith and a lot of people who really care about you.

~Danny~

Hi Debbie!

I'm probably late, (as usual!).... and you had plenty of precious advice already.... but here is what I did trying to restore your picture:

1) I fiddled with 'Calculation' and its flexibility of blendings to remove the reddish cast.

2) I duplicated the 'corrected' layer setting the blending to 'Screen' and adjusting the Opacity to light up the image a bit.

3) I used Clone, Blur and Airbrush tools to clean the image.

4) I 'Layered via Copy' parts of the good background to cover the second person in the picture.

5) I carefully corrected and coloured the eyes to enhance them and used Layer Masks, (Overlay, Color Burn and Color Dodge), working on them with a soft Airbrush 5% Opacity to highlight some details.Merged down.

6) After duplicating the image I changed to LAB mode, selected the Lightness Channel, copied it and pasted it under the 'merged down' Colour Layer.

7) I used the High Pass filter to sharpen the 'Lightness' Layer, selected the Layer above it setting the blending to 'Color'.

8) Hue&Saturation, Color Balance and Curves were my last steps in enhancing the image.....
....and here is the result:

Flora:

A wonderful restoration job, regardless of when posted!

~DannyR~

Flora thank you so much for responding. Your rendition is beautiful. Thanks for taking the time.
Danny your ideas gave me some new ones.
To all, Here is the almost finished product. The familly requested a background from her home in Ireland and gave me this. I think it's too busy, but it does have a certain quality to it. Am attaching my progress and once again apprecieate all and any pointers towards my end. Still unsure if I'll go painting-like, but am trying everything as the time winds down. I always did work best under pressure.
My best to you all.
Debbie

That's a great background. To me the clouds seem to be "opening up" to welcome her into heaven.

Are you comfortable enough with layer masks to blend her layer smoothly into the BG?

Danny

:blush: Thank you very much for your kind words!

Debbie

Thanks for your kindness!

Originally posted by Danny

...the clouds seem to be "opening up" to welcome her into heaven....

...I agree...the background is surely full of atmosphere...but a bit too sharp in comparison with the main image...you might try to 'soften' or fade it a bit....:)

Thanks Danny andd Flora. Am working on the facial flaws right now and will heed your advice on the bkgd. That's what I thought and will get on it. Clock is ticking.
Debbie

I corrected the color as best I could with Hue/Saturation/Lightness followed by Color Correction
then Extracted the lady from the background and repaired the left side of her dress with Free Transform and a little cloning. Created a new background and then ran the image through Neat Image to remove some noise. Cropped in a little tighter, sharpened the eyes a little and cleaned up some dust marks to finish.

Jim

I notice a white line around her. Assuming she is still on a separate layer, here is what you can do to fix this. Select the empty non-Mary area with the magic wand, then go to the select menu and choose "modify." Choose "expand" and expand the selected area until it covers the white outline. Then go to select menu again and choose "feather" and feather to one or two pixels, whatever works best on the size pic you are using. Then hit clear and the white outline should disappear without leaving a sharp edge. If there is still some left, then back up in the history list and set the selection to expand another pixel or two at that step then redo the last steps. Or you can just do it all a second time since it's pretty fast.

As for the background, you might want to use a bit of guassian blur on it since she is blurry and the background should not be sharper than the main subject. Nice choice of sky, by the way!

Phyllis

Well I think this is it. I'm bleary eyed and sad, but have reached the end. I tried to remember all your wonderful advice and used so many techniques that my mind is now fuzz! I've stopped here so as to avoid overkill, but if I've forgotten anything or still have something wrong please tell me. This has been a very draining experience emotionally and I truly mean that I never would have gotten this far so fast without all of you. Your advice and encouragement gave me the push to take this on and I will be forever thankful that I found this site. You are all pros in the true sense of the word. I wish that you were all there when the final copy is dedicated, but you will be there in my heart. I hope all who have viewed and/or responded to this post see this and realize what a part you all have had.
I still want your critiques to bring this to it's end.
Thank you all
Debbie

Debbie,

You have every right to be proud of what you've accomplished. I'm sure it was a draining ordeal, and I'm also just as sure that your efforts will be appreciated by everyone affected. I only have one suggestion, and Phyllis already pointed it out. I agree that the background should not be sharper than the main subject. But you have done an *excellent* job. I think you should be expecting to see a few tears shed when others see your work.

Ed

Oops you're right Ed. I marked that from Phyllis' last post and never got to that part. I will blur the back before printing. Thanks for pointing it out.
Debbie

You've done a beautiful job, Debbie. It looks like a fitting tribute for someone who obviously meant so much to you...

Debbie:

Congratulations on plowing through this. It was definitely a challenge, and you were up to the task.

Nicely done.

~Danny~

Bravo!

Beautiful, Debbie! You must be really pleased with the result of all your time and effort--you've created a treasure for all who knew her!

Phyllis

Bravo!

Beautiful, Debbie! You must be really pleased with the result of all your time and effort--you've created a treasure for all who knew her!

Phyllis

:bigthmb:
If I had time and could see straight I would create a small animation to show you all how I feel. However you shall have to settle for my heart. You are all so wonderful. Sister's family is already calling for copies of their own. The dedication of the school, in sister's name, takes place on October 16. I will take pics of the doings and post them here or on an outside site and invite you all to visit.
I know I could have done it alone,...BUT I never could have achieved this much without each and every one of you. I know I keep going on about that, but some of you can't imagine how much you have meant to me.
Sister touched so many hearts while she was alive. You have helped me to capture that feeling and create a touching memorial to her.
Again let's have a round of applause for all my friends and while you're at it please pat yourselves on the back once or twice. You have made a difference.

Debbie

Well I have nothing more to add, but I felt this was the place to post my 100 reply and graduate to many more. Here's to the next hundred!!
Deb

A fitting finish to a thread like this. :)

Ed

I think the final image came out really great! You got some pretty good advice and critiques here, huh?

What a wonderful place and a beautiful keepsake.

I just caught this thread (a bit late) and thought I'd add a painterly version of Sister Mary. I can email the full-size file if needed.

Regards,
John

Thanks so much John. The dedication was last week so the picture is done. I am going to keep all these beautiful renditions for my own personal album, including yours. I will post the final and photos of the dedication hopefully this weekend. Thanks again to you and all.
Debbie